The NEW Odamex thread

[LexiMax]

Odamex is a community driven open source multiplayer source port. It is a GPL source port based off of CSDoom 0.62 (although the Odamex of today is a totally different beast), which was in turn based off of ZDoom 1.22.

It supports:

• Cooperative, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and CTF multiplayer modes.
  
• Boom-level map computability
  
• Streaming WAD loading (No more are servers locked into one map)
  
• Server-side WAD downloading (in case GETWAD fails)
  
• A dedicated server browser called Odalaunch in addition to support for Internet Doom Explorer.
  
• Single Player support with loading, saving and reasonable demo compatibility. (it can serve as your only source port)
  
• The server compiles on most anything that runs GCC, and the client compiles on most anything that has GCC + SDL + SDL_Mixer. In addition to official packaged versions for Windows and Linux, it's been tested on Mac (PPC and x86), PPC Linux, several flavors of BSD and x86 Solaris.
  

Judging on recent commits, development on Odamex continues. 0.4.2 was released two months ago and by my count there are there are around 33 servers up. You now stand a reasonable chance of some of the servers being occupied, yesterday I launched Odalaunch to find a few people playing CTF.

So, let's talk about Odamex.

[Csonicgo]

About damn time. I might have to start compiling this again.

[myk]

My relationship with Odamex consists in occasionally checking to see whether bug 489 got fixed.

[EarthQuake]

I am waiting for several bug fixes as well. Can't do anything impressive with my mapping until Odamex completely supports Boom.

[myk]

EarthQuake said:
Can't do anything impressive with my mapping until Odamex completely supports Boom.

I can't say I sympathize with that.

[chungy]

myk said:

My relationship with Odamex consists in occasionally checking to see whether bug 489 got fixed.

same, except bug 499 instead.

[EarthQuake]

myk said:

I can't say I sympathize with that.

Well, if you understood, you probably would.

I'm trying to break boundaries here, and try something different. I can't do scripted sequences or the special multiplayer effects I had in mind without full, correct Boom support. Capture the flag, deathmatch, and cooperative only go so far... wouldn't you appreciate some new experiences?

[exp(x)]

If you guys want to see shit done, write your own patches.

[EarthQuake]

Because everyone here is an expert on programming with the Doom engine!
Holy shit, what am I waiting for? I should get started right away!

[esselfortium]

I agree with EarthQuake.

[LexiMax]

EarthQuake said:

I'm trying to break boundaries here, and try something different. I can't do scripted sequences or the special multiplayer effects I had in mind without full, correct Boom support. Capture the flag, deathmatch, and cooperative only go so far... wouldn't you appreciate some new experiences?

Not particularly. I want to see existing experiences done justice, and that's something I have yet to see with any of the major multiplayer source ports. Odamex is currently the brightest hope in terms of becoming the OSP of Doom, something that doesn't add a lot of superfluous mapping capability but concentrates on the multiplayer experience and delivers on it in spades.

[Creaphis]

The Ontario Society of Psychotherapists of Doom? The Orange Smoothie Productions of Doom? The Onafhankelijke Socialistische Partij of Doom?

[GreyGhost]

So long as it doesn't become the Oral Sodium Phosphate of Doom.

[Nes]

EarthQuake said:

I am waiting for several bug fixes as well. Can't do anything impressive with my mapping until Odamex completely supports Boom.

Can I get a list of everything that isn't Boom-compat in Odamex? (Unless it's just generalized linedef types)

[myk]

Adding Boom compatibility does not just imply slapping Boom's features into the engine. It should should be added with a server setting that enables Boom changes over vanilla:

Boom 0/1

More or less in the way Boom itself has a Doom compatibility setting you can toggle. You can additionally provide the MBF-style method that has various settings, one per change, but that's a pain in the ass to manage and usually unnecessary because most level sets are either for Doom or for Boom, not some hybrid.

This will guarantee both Doom and Boom behaviors without causing levels to malfunction or annoying players that are expecting subtleties they've been used to for years.

[Sonikku7]

I can't say I've had a good experience with Odamex. It is one of the few source ports that I don't have backed up on my external drive. I was let down with all the odd sound bugs, and other issues that seem to make the port unstable.

[Use]

When was it 'switched' over to zdoom? Wasn't the point of Odamex to facilitate a closer vanilla multiplayer experience?

[esselfortium]

Odamex has always been based on ZDoom, Use, but on an old version, and with all the Raven source and everything else non-GPL (though the Raven source now could legally be included) stripped out of it.

[LexiMax]

Creaphis said:

The Ontario Society of Psychotherapists of Doom? The Orange Smoothie Productions of Doom? The Onafhankelijke Socialistische Partij of Doom?

#2 is correct

[EarthQuake]

esselfortium said:

Odamex has always been based on ZDoom, Use, but on an old version, and with all the Raven source and everything else non-GPL (though the Raven source now could legally be included) stripped out of it.

And this is the reason why so many bugs exist: basically having to revert many things to their original functionality and behavior. But even considering all the bugs, it's closer to vanilla than Skulltag or ZDaemon could ever get.

[Nes]

I don't think that's the reason so many bugs exist. We've been very careful in backward compatability and functionality, especially since denis lives on regression tests.

Most of the bugs either have to do with SDL or the netcode.

[Karnizero]

Odamex main webpage is not working:

http://odamex.net

I can't only access the SourceForge project homepage for downloads:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/odamex/

Any tip on what is going on?

Thanks.

[RTC_Marine]

Manc (website services) is moving everything to a new hosting provider (no more dreamhost!)